Get a group of photographers together and what do we talk about? The best lighting conditions for great portraits? How to time your camera for that extended fireworks over the stadium shot? Different stages of twilight as the sunsets? Actually, you can check out March’s blog for that last one.
You might be surprised to know that photographers and non-photographers alike seem to be consumed with counting and comparing megapixels (MP). “Hey Joe, I really like your older 12 megapix camera but look at my latest 88 megapix telescoping, auto-adjust, shake rattle and roll resistant, all-programmable version that I just bought at the superstore. Once I figure out how to turn it on I’m sure I’ll take some great pics…”
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Guess how many MPs this shot has? |
What is a megapixel? Well, mega means one million and pixel is short for ‘picture element,’ so a 6 MP camera has six million pixels. That really explains everything right?
I think of a pixel as a brush stroke and we’re talking about traditional painters not the splatter a can of paint on an eight foot canvas and see what happens type of painters. Sorry Jackson Pollock fans.
Just as you need a certain number of brushstrokes to get enough detail in a painting, you’ll need enough pixels from your camera in order to make decent 5×7 or 8×10 prints. For most people, the cameras with the best range of detail have somewhere between 5 and 12 MP.*
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No, it’s not the camera. The building really does lean back like a rubber band
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However, when you get too many brushstrokes on a standard sized canvas, the painting starts to look messy and actually the detail starts to blur. The same is true in photography and technically called “circles of confusion,” (well named!) and relates to how the camera focuses points of light.**
Now break all the rules! There is a famous photographer, Chase Jarvis, who takes great photos with his iphone that has a whopping 2 MP. That’s right, just 2 MP (the latest iphone now has 3MP.) Admittedly, he won’t be blowing these images to 2 feet by 3 feet and will be hard pressed to get a decent 5×7, but for viewing on the web or emailing, they look great.
Click for Chase’s Blog
So….I tried taking some shots with my 640 x 480 pixel cellphone. The company won’t say how many MP it has but if you multiply 640 x 480 you get 0.3 MP. Yes – only about a 1/3 of a MP! No wonder they won’t advertise this.
All the photos on this page were taken with my cellphone. Not my finest work but I was still surprised at the image quality at least for the web. So, the next time someone quizzes you about how many MP are in your new camera, just ask them if they own a cell phone.
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*This guideline holds for most consumer cameras – those that are sold with something called an APS-C sensor. The sensor is similar to the painter’s canvas and professional cameras with full-frame or larger sensors are able to use more megapixels without compromising detail. Kind of like when Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine chapel, he had a much bigger canvas and could use more brushstrokes without smudging details. **If you want to know more about the physics of diffraction and so-called areas of confusion then click here.
[Excerpted from Photography Insights, Volume 1, by Scott Ober, MD Copyright © 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED]
